A major concern among employers is the issue of presenteeism, or the phenomena that, while employees may be at work, health problems such as, lower back pain, fatigue, high blood pressure and obesity, keep them from working optimally, and cause a rapid rise in employee healthcare costs. Unfortunately, even if employees are made aware of sound health and ergonomic practices, they often slip back into poor health and ergonomic practices while engrossed in work. For example, although the employee may know they need to avoid lifting a heavy objects to reduce the risk of a back injury (e.g., based on an annual health awareness presentation), the employee may simply forget while they are engrossed in their daily work activities and lift a heavy object.
The current state of the art solution is to notify an employee of health conditions and poor ergonomics based on workplace health programs that require the employee to actively participate the in periodic health tests. For example, health programs may monitor the employee using health tests that are conducted at discrete testing times (e.g., quarterly or annual health tests) and, only then, provide the employee with test results. Thus, existing health programs may require the employee to expend effort just to take part in the program, decreasing the likelihood the employee will even engage the health program, much less continue the health program for an extended period of time. Moreover, the infrequent nature of the health tests may provide results that are based on a few discrete time periods throughout the year and, thus, are not capable of providing frequent (e.g., real-time) feedback that can be used by the employee to dynamically adjusted their day-to-day actions. As a result, employees may not be aware of the health consequences that result from their actions during the work day and, even when the employees are aware of the consequences of their actions (e.g., based on quarterly or annual health tests), the employees may simply forget to follow good health practices while they are engrossed in work and are not focused on the impact of their actions on their health.